Pics: Accidents in India

This is a discussion on Pics: Accidents in India within Road Safety, part of the Team-BHP category; Originally Posted by mayankk
... Could just be an accident.
There is no such thing as just an accident....

On 24th December afternoon at around 12:30 PM, I met with an almost accident. I was travelling in the outermost lane in my maruti 800 behind a car at 40kmph. It was a dual carriageway i.e. two lanes on each side and a divider in the middle. I just cleared heavy traffic and was in the outskirts leaving Warangal. The car ahead of me was slow. I honked the horn but he did not budge. So, I wanted to overtake him from the left and saw my mirrors. There was a bike that was going at almost the same speed in the left lane beside me. I was waiting for a gap so that I could come left and overtake. There was a pothole on the road and the biker started to come close to my car to avoid it which I was conscious and watching carefully. He was making his way to avoid the BIG pothole that everyone could see. A stupid biker on a splendor came barreling down through the traffic from behind and jumped into the perishing gap. Every single man could see that the gap is no longer there and bikers behind were also braking. But our hero on a splendor did not even slow down a bit on seeing that the biker is coming towards the car. The splendor squeezed his way into the gap. He was midway in the gap and he was about to lock up his handle with the other biker. It was that close. He tilted right to avoid it and then he noticed that he is going to bump into my car. To avoid hitting my RVM, he tilted his bike left and started to power up further. His rear tyre hit my left front tyre and he started fishtailing. To correct it, he made his bike straight and ploughed straight onto the mud beside the road. He did not even slow down but recovered his bike from the fishtailing and narrowly missed a vendor sitting beside the road, got back on the road and carried out at the same speed finishing the overtaking. I was doing 40 the whole time and wanted to stop but since there was this biker and other traffic, I could not stop beside the road.

And when I was doing 40 kmph, he bumped into me, had the fishtailing, recovered, missed the vendor and sped by and he was still ahead of me(I mean he did not even slow down to speeds lesser than 40 in the whole time). He did not even stop for a while to take rest. He was about to crash, went off-road, came back on road and sped away. Stupid mindless morons of today.

It exposes you to people wanting to pull over for some reason, or turn for that matter, exposes you to stupid bikers ..

One thing about safe driving is to avoid stupidity by others as much as possible instead of increase risk exposure,and to follow road rules. Neither two were visible here.

Also warangal outskirts, cleared heavy traffic but still a narrow two lane with potholes. Why do you want to accelerate past and overtake in that little tin can, or even in a car with six airbags, abs, roll cage and what not?

By the way this is just what happened to this omni apparently, in the small south tn town where I am now. Got sandwiched by a biker, swerved to avoid and then rear ended a truck he was tailgating. You can see the end result.

It exposes you to people wanting to pull over for some reason, or turn for that matter, exposes you to stupid bikers ..

I was thinking of overtaking from left. But since there was this biker in the middle of left lane, I was waiting for him to pass by and did not execute the act.

Let me clarify one thing, i was on a four lane highway leaving warangal. There were two lanes in the left, two lanes in the right and a big divider in the middle.

I was on the overtaking lane of left side roads. The bike was cruising at 40 in the middle of left side cruising lane and the car was in the ovrrtaking lane. So both the roads on this side of the divider were occupied. I was behind the car stuck on to the divider and was waiting for him to finish the overtaking manoeuvre so that i could overtake him.

Quote:

One thing about safe driving is to avoid stupidity by others as much as possible instead of increase risk exposure,and to follow road rules. Neither two were visible here.

Also warangal outskirts, cleared heavy traffic but still a narrow two lane with potholes. Why do you want to accelerate past and overtake in that little tin can, or even in a car with six airbags, abs, roll cage and what not?

By the way this is just what happened to this omni apparently, in the small south tn town where I am now. Got sandwiched by a biker, swerved to avoid and then rear ended a truck he was tailgating. You can see the end result.

I admit I was about to break the traffic rule if I overtook him from the left but i did not start the process. I was just telling you the scenario so that you could know that i was actually looking to the left to see what was happening.

Let me get the narration straight. I was in the right lane of a divided highway. There were two lanes to our side and two on the other side with a big divider in the middle. i was cruising in the right lane at 40 behind a car. There was a bike in the left lane doing 40. There was this occassional potholes that randomly popped up. To avoid one of those potholes once in every km, he was taking right. It was a deep but small pothole and he could simply take a slight bit of right and avoid it even if i were sittimg there all the time in the right lane. But a stupid biker doing 80 on a splendor came between that bike and my car, narrowly missed locking handlebar with the biker, tilted a bit to avoid my RVM. All this in a fraction of a second. He bumped into my tyre, almost lost control, went into the mud, regained it and zoomed off at 60 kmph.

If I could give you an analogy, the situation and road is like that kanchipuram highway past decathlon in chennai towards Bangalore.

It exposes you to people wanting to pull over for some reason, or turn for that matter, exposes you to stupid bikers ..

One thing about safe driving is to avoid stupidity by others as much as possible instead of increase risk exposure,and to follow road rules. Neither two were visible here.....

Quote:

Originally Posted by hserus

Too close to bikers is still dodgy but your story looks more reasonable now. Keep to the right lane in any case, if you can.

This is the traffic and my style of driving. My brother sitting in the passenger seat recorded it on the way back from a small work. Any feedback on this? Is this still rash and inconsiderate? Is it still a valid argument for me to overtake from left? If you watch the video, you can see that despite the honking, no one even bothers to get out of the way. They just check out the car and be still blocking the way. I honk to let people know I am passing by. I wait for my turn to overtake. I am very aware of people cutting into my way and give a long horn to warn them beforehand. And by the way, I get a mileage of 21 kmpl which means my driving cannot be rash.

And yes, all roads in warangal are like this. Our former PM PV Narsimha Rao took all the efforts to put W I D E roads in warangal during his time. So, with wide roads, everyone thinks, OK, the road is big, he will find somewhere to go and why should I bother to give him way.

And by the way, I have a photograph of the road and it looks like this. Took it on the way back. Not the actual spot but that is how the road is.

I get a mileage of 21 kmpl which means my driving cannot be rash........

Not questioning your safe driving practices, but how exactly does good FE equate to not driving rashly?

Rash driving doesn't always have to be pedal-to-metal stuff, it can be done while cruising at 40kmph at optimum gear too. It's all about making moves in moving traffic that can't be considered reasonably safe, and plenty of those don't need aggressive input on the ABC pedals.

This is the traffic and my style of driving. My brother sitting in the passenger seat recorded it on the way back from a small work. Any feedback on this? Is this still rash and inconsiderate? Is it still a valid argument for me to overtake from left?

This is going OT, but from the sample video it seems you drive safe.

Overtaking from left, even though not ideal, is a necessity in our traffic conditions especially within city.

Even that report says "predicting crash" but isn't Tesla's radar just detecting an obstacle ahead? Watch the video carefully and you can see Tesla giving audible warning as soon as the two vehicles ahead of the car in front of Tesla decelerates rapidly. Rather than predicting that the car ahead is going to collide, it feels more like the radar detected an obstacle ahead of even the car just ahead in the path of Tesla and alerted the driver and responded to it that's all.

Last edited by ajaypjayaraj : 28th December 2016 at 18:14.
Reason: Typo

Even that report says "predicting crash" but isn't Tesla's radar just detecting an obstacle ahead? Watch the video carefully and you can see Tesla giving audible warning as soon as the two vehicles ahead of the car in front of Tesla decelerates rapidly. Rather than predicting that the car ahead is going to collide, it feels more like the radar detected an obstacle ahead of even the car just ahead but in the path of Tesla and alerted the driver and responded to it that's all.

You're right. I found it interesting because the vehicle ahead was not visible, so a human driver may not have slowed down in time. It didn't predict the crash per se, but could see a dangerous situation which a human might have missed.